A Chinese worker demonstrates how he will fire a barrage against errant clouds during the Olympics in August. (Source: Reuters)

China will bring out the BFGs to try to make sure weather doesn't rain on its Olympics

China may have to worry about clouds
of smog and black
soot due to its lax environmental policies and large scale adoption of
inefficient partial-combustion obsolete technologies, but one thing it won't
have to worry about at the 2008 Beijing Olympics this August is rain – that is if
everything goes according to plan.

China is leveraging its significant military resources to wage a war against Mother
Nature. China plans to deploy 20 anti-aircraft (AA) guns around the city, firing a steady barrage of special payloads
containing silver iodide and dry ice into cloud cover, whenever it should
appear. The Chinese hope that this novel strategy will help make the
Olympics rain free and perhaps give it a chance to show
off its military prowess.

The country is so confident in
its rain fighting powers that the 91,000-seat Olympic stadium, nicknamed
the "Bird's Nest," has no roof. The efforts are being led by
the city's Weather Modification Office, a sub-branch of the China
Meteorological Administration. The AA/rocket launcher assault is only one
phase of a three-pronged assault the Office plans to deploy against
inconvenient weather.

The first phase is detection. China will use satellites, planes, and
radar to track incoming weather. It will also leverage the power of an
IBM p575 supercomputer, which the city purchased last year. The computer
is capable of doing a modest 9.8 trillion floating point operations per second
and has enough power to accurately model by the kilometer hourly reports for
the entire 44,000 square kilometer (17,000 square mile) Beijing area.

Upon detection, the second phase will commence, starting with a barrage from 20
ground-based sites encircling the stadium. Two aircraft will also be
scrambled to spray dry ice and silver iodide into the clouds in an attempt to
stop them from reaching the stadium.

If rain manages to break through these barriers, China will deploy its weapon of
last resort: liquid nitrogen.
Aircraft will pummel the clouds with liquid nitrogen. This, according to
officials, will increase the number of droplets in the cloud, but reduce their
size, making them less likely to fall. Officials hope this last ditch
effort might hold off the clouds long enough for them to pass safely over the
stadium before releasing rain.

There is a 50 percent chance of precipitation during any day that month,
according to past trends. The games will occur during Northeast Asia's
rainy season. Zhang Qian, head of Beijing's Weather Modification Office,
warns that past results for weather modification during heavy rain haven't
always been successful. However, he optimistically mentions, "the
results with light rain have been satisfactory."

The Chinese government is working very hard to try to make the games a
demonstration in the countries newfound power and prosperity. The
government spent $40B USD bringing 120,000 migrant workers (at $130 per month)
into Beijing for the massive construction projects planned, starting in 2001. In
all, 1.5 million people will be displaced by the new construction
projects.

China, with a population of 1.32 billion, has a penchant for
excess; featuring the world's largest dam, the world's highest railroad, and in
2009, the world's largest Ferris wheel. China's weather modification
program will also be the largest in the world, when fully deployed. It
will feature over 1,500 weather modification professionals who will coordinate
30 aircraft and their crews, and a ground force of 37,000 part-time workers,
mostly peasant farmers.

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Chinese are just bonkers. You read this thing about honey bees around the world suffering and dying out because of pesticides? Well apparently it's worst guess where? Yup China, because they have naff-all regulation and stick the most effective yet toxic shit on their crops. Bees gather nectar, bees eat nectar, bees die.

Well the bees have basically been WIPED OUT in China and they now have no way to insect pollinate their crops. But this is China right, noooooo problem! We just get an army of several thousand Chinese worker 'drones' to MANUALLY hand pollinate every - single - plant !

Now perhaps you know what you're dealing with here. Authorities that don’t care how it's done, they just want it done. They will destroy whatever gets in their way, rain clouds included.

Yep. Sounds tremendously like an industrial revolution to me. Except that there is far more dangerous things around today that can be abused, then when we all grew up. If we'd have had it, we'd have used it. Especially competing against other major powers to do it.

You also realize that a lot of this shit happens at the ignorance or behest of Multinationals right? Why do you think they move jobs, production and mfg overseas? Cause the poor countries have to offer something... they do their environment, workers, etc. Every state has to have a job.

We've decided to start them in the shit jobs, as we firmly believe in earning it. Their goal is industrialization. Their goal is to bring 1/4 of the worlds population into the modern world in 100 years. 1950's ish to 2050... It took us 150 years to do so with 17 or 18% of the worlds population...

Don't think for a second our system was built upon labour laws, human rights, etc. We employed kids, had slaves, were slaves, were piss poor wage earners, were factory owners, were old money. We did as much damage to our workforce, population, children, and indigenous populations as they are. We just did it in our past.

This is the largest industrial revolution EVER, their eventual skilled, trained, and disciplined work force will out number both the EU and US's workforces, and a domestic 'able to consume' market larger the 2 NAFTA's will exist...

The bee's suck... So did some of our mistakes. Our chemicals mess with us too, we stop using them, because we can afford the alternative, and really only because eventually enough lawsuits are filed that it becomes more expensive for the private firm to use them, then to adapt an alternative.

Shareholders then, and now don't often vote with their environmental convictions. They tend to want to maximize ROI...

Long story short, no other state on the panet has had to deal with what China is carrying out, no one. So get off the high horse, and realize that China has existed as a state far longer then any Western nation, and was once easily the strongest world power (1400's).

Its about pride and saving face, as much as anything else. Why is Putin having such a love in in Russia? He led them out of the Lost Decade. They are again a power, and not broken and battered.

Chinese people by and large want the good life, they also have a far longer history to exist within, and a scope that chronologically is practically unrivaled. 100 years is a worthy price to pay to get to a good stable economic, modern life. Especially if it brings pride back to her. Event he Chinese know that in this world you have to earn it. And so they get the jobs they can, and keep movin on up.

quote: The bee's suck... So did some of our mistakes. Our chemicals mess with us too, we stop using them, because we can afford the alternative, and really only because eventually enough lawsuits are filed that it becomes more expensive for the private firm to use them, then to adapt an alternative

There’s one thing you’re leaving out: The First Amendment; along with freedom in general. People in China don’t have it. So there will never be any lawsuits on behalf of “labor laws, human rights, slaves, piss poor wage earners”, much less the environment. That said, I wouldn’t be defending China’s industrial revolution, or at least comparing it to that of the West.

quote: Shareholders then, and now don't often vote with their environmental convictions. They tend to want to maximize ROI.

The purpose of any public company is maximization of shareholder wealth; don’t ever think that its purpose is anything other. While some may hold the belief that a few public companies have other, nobler causes that drive their desire to compete, it is nothing more than a marketing and public relations fallacy. Companies from all industries use marketing and public relations to build positive public images. In the end, companies from BP to Whole Foods Markets utilize the strategies necessary to maximize their shareholders wealth.

"A politician stumbles over himself... Then they pick it out. They edit it. He runs the clip, and then he makes a funny face, and the whole audience has a Pavlovian response." -- Joe Scarborough on John Stewart over Jim Cramer